Contrary to popular belief, God not only survived the Enlightenment, but thrived within it. By exposing the Enlightenment's close ties to the traditions of the Renaissance, the passions of the Reformation, and the stirrings of globalization, God in the Enlightenment offers a spectral view of the age of lights.

Acknowledgements Abbreviations Editors and Contributors Introduction: Enlightenment for the Culture Wars William J. Bulman 1: Godless Politics: Hobbes and Public Religion Justin Champion 2: Reason and Utility in French Religious Apologetics Anton Matytsin 3: Bernabé Cobo's Re-creation of an Authentic America in Colonial Peru Claudia Brosseder 4: From Christian Apologetics to Deism: Libertine Readings of Hinduism, 1600-1730 Joan-Pau Rubiés 5: The Platonic Captivity of Primitive Christianity and the Enlightening of Augustine Paul C.H. Lim 6: God's Word in the Dutch Republic Jetze Touber 7: Suffering Job: Christianity Beyond Metaphysics Jonathan Sheehan 8: The Reformation Origins of the Enlightenment's God Brad S. Gregory 9: 'God' and 'the Enlightenment': The Divine Attributes and the Question of Categories in British Discourse J. C. D. Clark 10: Medicine, Theology, and the Problem of Germany's Pietist Ecstatics H. C. Erik Midelfort 11: Richard Bentley's Paradise Lost and the Ghost of Spinoza Sarah Ellenzweig Conclusion: The Varieties of Enlightened Experience Dale K. Van Kley

"very much because of the volume's successes and the stylistic and interpretive issues it raises, each contribution to God in the Enlightenment advances our understanding of the period by sparking further debate about, and investigation into, what in France was known to contemporaries as the siècle de lumières (century of lights). This important edited volume depicts the Enlightenment as a diverse constellation of reform programs that had, among their origins, theological controversies of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and as their consequences, seismic shifts in how Modern Europeans (and the societies shaped or disrupted by them) would eventually talk about God, faith, and religious expression." -- Jeffrey D. Burson, Journal of Jesuit Studies "No reader of this valuable collection will be left in any doubt that the traditional view of the period as a radical break with the past is not merely misleading but fundamentally erroneous. In a kaleidoscopic array of essays ranging in topic from Hobbes and Spinoza to Leibniz and Kant and from Hinduism to pre-Hispanic Andean religions, the resilience of the Renaissance and the Reformation is everywhere in evidence. God not only survived but seemed to thrive in an environment that we have grown accustomed to conceiving as characteristically individualistic and libertarian but which was just as often, and just as vigorously, communitarian and authoritarian." --Fernando Cervantes, Left History "God in the Enlightenment incorporates many insightful discussions on a diverse range of topics, and embodies the ethos of recent trends in Enlightenment studies...It will be of a great interest to those who wish to explore the origins of contemporary discussions on the role and place of religion in liberal democracies." -- Simon Lewis (University College, Oxford), Wesley and Methodist Studies "By any standard, this is a fine collection of essays, anchored in the second half of the seventeenth century and also reflecting the global turn in Enlightenment studies."--Nigel Aston, Renaissance Quarterly "If the diversity of Enlightenments represented in this volume suggests a lack of consensus about how best to apply scholarship on the Enlightenment to ongoing debates about religion in public life, it also testifies to the unabating fruitfulness of the research agendas inspired by the imperative of doing so. Religious Enlightenment studies remains a field in full bloom."--The Catholic Historical Review "[T]his interesting volume...investigates several new paths for trying to understand the multifaceted role of religion in this period."--H-Net "Brilliantly illustrates how approaches to secularity beyond liberal secularism can reveal richer descriptions of Enlightenment. William Bulman's introductory synthesis and the contributing essays deserve serious attention from any reader who hopes to muster history in the service of understanding religion and secularity today."--The Immanent Frame "A stimulating collection of essays by distinguished scholars who present often radically revised evaluations of the Enlightenment and the place of religion within it . God in the Enlightenment provides an exceptionally useful and illuminating investigation of new directions in Enlightenment scholarship. The book should be of interest to anyone interested in the historical roots of the contemporary world, and the place of religion in it."--Reading Religion "This work shines with essays from an intellectual diversity of important scholars and often strikingly original perspectives. It not only addresses the increasingly problematic interaction of religion and the eighteenth-century Enlightenment in provocative and significant ways, it goes to the underlying issue of the place of God in Enlightenment debate, dilemmas, continuities, and reevaluations. This is a genuinely important collection." --Alan Charles Kors, Henry Charles Lea Professor History, University of Pennsylvania

Selling point: Provides an alternative to the idea of the Enlightenment as a philosophical movement of secular liberalism Selling point: Transforms historical basis for contemporary debates about the role of religion in public life Selling point: Features diverse contributions from distinguished scholars of history, theology, and literature Selling point: Covers the entire period of the Enlightenment on a global scale

William J. Bulman is Assistant Professor of History at Lehigh University. He previously held postdoctoral fellowships at Vanderbilt and Yale. Robert G. Ingram is Associate Professor of History at Ohio University and Director of the George Washington Forum on American Ideas, Politics, and Institutions.

Selling point: Provides an alternative to the idea of the Enlightenment as a philosophical movement of secular liberalism Selling point: Transforms historical basis for contemporary debates about the role of religion in public life Selling point: Features diverse contributions from distinguished scholars of history, theology, and literature Selling point: Covers the entire period of the Enlightenment on a global scale